From that moment Cromwell's fate was sealed; the Lords loathed him as an upstart even more than they had loathed Wolsey; he had no church to support him; Norfolk and Gardiner detested him from pique as well as on principle, and he had no friend in the council save Cranmer. As lay viceregent he had given umbrage to nearly every churchman, and he had put all his eggs in the one basket of royal favour, which had now failed him. Cromwell did not succumb without an effort, and a desperate struggle ensued in the council. In April the French ambassador wrote that he was tottering to his fall; a few days later he was created earl of Essex and lord great chamberlain, and two of his satellites were made secretaries to the king; he then despatched one bishop to the Tower, and threatened to send five others to join him. At last Henry struck as suddenly and remorselessly as a beast of prey; on the 10th of June Norfolk accused him of treason; the whole council joined in the attack, and Cromwell was sent to the Tower. A vast number of crimes was laid to his charge, but not submitted for trial. An act of attainder was passed against him without a dissentient voice, and after contributing his mite towards the divorce of Anne, he was beheaded on Tower Hill on the 28th of July, repudiating all heresy and declaring that he died in the Catholic faith.
In estimating Cromwell's character it must be remembered that his father was a blackguard, and that he himself spent the formative years of his life in a vile school of morals. A ruffian he doubtless was, as he says, in his youth, and he was the last man to need the tuition of Machiavelli. Nevertheless he civilized himself to a certain extent; he was not a drunkard nor a forger like his father; from personal immorality he seems to have been singularly free; he was a kind master, and a stanch friend; and he possessed all the outward graces of the Renaissance period. He was not vindictive, and his atrocious acts were done in no private quarrel, but in what he conceived to be the interests of his master and the state. Where those interests were concerned he had no heart and no conscience and no religious faith; no man was more completely blighted by the 16th century worship of the state.
